Livestock agriculture uses up 32% of Australia’s fresh water and they tell us to take shorter showers when there’s a drought!

Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2012, Year Book Australia, 1301.0. www.abs.gov.au

One kilogram of beef requires 15,182 litres of water to produce on average in Australia, factoring on both grass fed and grain fed production systems calculated in proportion to the production volumes of each production system.

Eating a burger has the same water footprint as a month of daily showers. Here is how we arrived at this number.

According to Yarra Valley Water an efficient shower head pumps out 7 litters of water per minute. www.yvw.com.au
According to this Australian study of shower habits, the average shower duration is 7.19 minutes. Therefore average shower is 50 litres.
Average beef burger is around 100 grams (varies from 50 grams to 160 grams) based on what was on offer at Coles Online. This means the average water footprint of a hamburger is 1,518 litres, which amounts to 30 showers.

UNFAO, 2006 ‘Livestock’s Long Shadow: Environmental Issues and Options’, United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation & The Livestock, Environment and Development Initiative. www.fao.org

Climatarian Diet

If meat consumption increases at current rates, by 2050 global GHG emissions from agriculture will have increased by 76%. If we all reduced meat consumption by 25%, it could result in a 51% decline in agricultural GHG emissions over the same period.

In 2011, the average global per capita meat consumption was 116g per day. A 22% percent reduction to 90g a day; as recommended by the Harvard healthy eating guide, would potentially avoid 2.14 Gt CO2-e per year by 2030, a figure that increases when beef and lamb meat consumption is replaced by non-beef and lamb sources.

Without significant reductions in beef and lamb meat and dairy consumption, the growth in agricultural emissions will crowd out mitigation efforts in other sectors and render the 2°C target unrealisable.

The average Australian diet accounts for 14.5kg CO2-e per person per day, with red meat accounting for 8 kg CO2-e per person per day. Reducing beef and lamb meat consumption to 50g per day could reduce agricultural GHG emissions by 22%, while preventing incidences of colorectal cancer by over 10%.

Currently, livestock consume 36% of the calories produced by food-crops, with only 12% of those eventually finding their way into the human diet in the form of meat or dairy. If crops were grown exclusively for human consumption, it could increase food calories by 70% and feed an additional 4 billion people, with even a small change in the distribution of crops from livestock fodder to food dramatically increasing food availability.

In the UK, shifting from a high-meat to a low-meat diet could reduce an individual’s carbon footprint by 920 kg CO2-eper year; shifting from high-meat to vegetarian could reduce it by 1230 kg CO2-e per year; and shifting from high-meat to vegan could reduce it by 1560 kg CO2-e per year. As a point of comparison, an economy flight between London and New York would generate 960 kg CO2-e, while a family driving 6000 miles over ten years in a small car would generate 2440 kg CO2-e, roughly equivalent to two high-meat eaters switching to a vegetarian diet for a year.

Taking the average GHG emissions reduction potential from six alternative diet scenarios, researchers in the UK calculated that a nationwide reduction of 1.78 kg CO2-e per person per day would be equivalent to 50% in exhaust emissions from the entire UK passenger car fleet.

About LMLH

Less Meat Less Heat is an organisation focused on avoiding catastrophic climate change by, alongside transitioning away from fossil fuels to renewable energy, drastically reducing the consumption of the types of meat most damaging to the climate...
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